The invention relates to a plant duster and, more particularly, a duster for dusting pollen, insecticide or other powder onto a date palm.
The date palm tree is a monosexual and needs transfer of pollen from the flowers of a male tree to the flowers of a female tree to give proper fruit. Such pollen transfer may occur naturally by air, but this way yields little or no fruit. It may also occur manually by taking some of the male flowers to spray their pollen onto the female flowers. This requires climbing up the tree, however, which is very difficult. To make such manual pollen transfer easier, therefore, pollinators are used. Some of the pollinators still require climbing up the tree, like the so-called American and Japanese pollinators, for example. Some of them need heavy machinery or compressed air, like those sold under the marks Al-nahren, Homribi and Baghdad, for example. Some of them are difficult to use in other ways, especially in raising to female flowers at the top of a very high tree.
The inventor named herein has, therefore, also invented pollinators identified as Mosa'ab, Mahmood and Osamah Pollinators to try to avoid the described disadvantage of the other above-identified pollinators. Thus, these require no heavy machinery and no compressed air. They are also cheap and can be raised to the tops of high trees easily. They are also easy to operate.
The Mosa'ab Date Palm Pollinator has a long, graduated aluminum carrying tube. On one, upper end of the carrying tube, there is a small cylindrical container for male pollen with a cone-shaped lower part connecting it, point down, to a horizontal, small-diameter tube, transverse to the carrying tube, for funneling the pollen thereinto. The small-diameter tube is connected at one end to the lumen of the carrying tube and is open at the other end, which projects from the container about 3 cm., to allow the pollen to go out. The lower end of the carrying tube has a small bulb pump of about 50 c.c. capacity. For use, the carrying tube is grasped by hand to position the open end of the small-diameter tube at a female flower. The bulb is then squeezed to pump air into the lumen of the carrying tube and, therefrom, to the connected end to the small-diameter tube to push the pollen dropped thereinto from the container out onto the female flower for pollination.
The Mahmood Date Palm Pollinator has the same carrying tube. Its cylinderical container on one end thereof for pollen also has a cone in its lower end, but it is directed point upward and inside the container with small bores about its base circumference where it is attached to the cylinder and communicates with the lumen of the carrying tube. The other, upper end of the cylinder is closed by a stopper having 1/2 cm small-diameter tube 120 cm. long passing through it so that its lumen is connected to the lumen of the cylinder. The other, lower end of the carrying tube is again connected to an air pump. Any type of air pump may be used such as, for example, an insecticide sprayer pump. In use, from air the pump passes into the carrying tube, from the carrying tubes into container, through the pollen in the container into the stopper-held tube in the top of the container and then to the female flower, entraining some of the pollen from the container.
The Osamah Date Palm Pollinator is the same as the Mosa'ab, with two differences. First it has a 100 cm. long tube extending vertically form the open end of the horizontal tube. Its action is to take the pollen to the female flowers. Second, it has an electric air pump on the other, lower end of the carrying tube in place of the bulb pump previously described. The electric pump works on two, dry, 1.5 volt batteries to give enough low-pressure air for pollination work.
In all three of Applicant's prior pollinators, a mix of one part extracted pollen to 10 parts of fine flour is usable in the container.
The disadvantages of Mosa'ab pollinator are slow discharge of the pollen mixture, linking in the leaves and leaflets of the female palm tree too easily and the possibility of clumping of the flour mixture inside it. Its advantages are its light weight, that it does not need compressed air, and that it can reach to 12 m. high.
The disadvantages of the Mahmood Pollinator, are that it needs repeated pumping and that the big torque of tree contact with the upper, stopper-held, small tube can break it, because it cannot bend. Its advantages very rapid (fastest) discharge of the pollen mixture, that it can reach to 14 m. high, that it will not link in the leaves and leaflets of the female palm tree, that it is more economical in its use of the pollen mixture and that the pollen mixture does not clump inside it.
The disadvantages of the Osamah Pollinator are that it is too easily blocked by clumps of the pollen mixture and that its output of the pollen mixture is irregular. Its advantages are that it does not need repumping because it works on a battery and that it does not link in leaves and leaflets of the female palm tree.
All of applicant's prior pollinators have a further great advantage in that each can be carried easily by the hand between the trees and does not need big, difficult, additional machinery. Also, they have the air power from below and the pollen in the opposite, upper end. That means no loose pollen in the long carrying tube and no heavy part in the upper end. (If the diameter of the carrying tube is 3 cm, this means a volume in 10 m of about 7000 cc. This means a loss from use of 7000 cc of pollen saturated air if the pollen were air-entrained at the lower end of the carrying tube. Such substantial pollen loss is shown to be realistically avoided by comparison to the 95 cc. volume of the small-diameter tube of the Mahmood Pollinator.)
If the upper, pollen-discharging end carried the air-pumping power, the pollinator would become heavy and very difficult to use (A 10 m. carrying tube gives a very big torque with any weight on its upper end.)
It is, therefore, an object of the invention to provide a plant duster and, more particularly, a duster for date palm pollination which avoids at least some of the disadvantages and retains most of the advantages of those described.